What I'm Reading Now

Ann Patchett, Whistler

I feel like I should read Patchett more than I do. Every time I pick up one of her books, I end up liking it a lot. Somehow I've never read straight through her publications as I do with other authors I like.

Anyway, this is one is good. It's about a woman, Daphne, in her fifties who runs across her former stepfather -- a man her mother was married to for a few months when Daphne was nine years old. They divorced shortly after Daphne and the stepfather were in an accident, and Daphne hasn't seen him since. But she has always remembered him and always loved him, and always blamed herself for the divorce.

Whistler is a horse, which neither Daphne nor anyone in her family has ever met. But his story turns out to be crucial to theirs. No spoilers otherwise.

I love this book a lot. It's also very short, but unlike many short books, it's exactly as long as it needs to be. 10/10, no notes.

Stephen Baxter, Evolution

I read all of this -- well, not every word, because I skimmed some bits where Baxter is just listing plants and various lifeforms in a given era -- so I guess I liked it. Baxter follows the genetic line of a specific human, from back before the Chicxulub Impact (when the ancestor was a small mammal) through 2034, when a volcano finishes destroying the current ecosystem, into the future when the sun explodes.

The main character is evolution and how it shapes one specific line of genetic material, with side excursions into other lines. It's accurate enough, especially as to how random and non-teleological evolution is, but since the main character is a mindless force of nature, it's a little hard to care what happens to any of the 'characters' in the story. It's an idea-not-character science fiction novel.

Baxter mentions but doesn't really deal with the accidental things that make up human/hominid consciousness and identity -- why we grieve, how we can be paralyzed with anxiety, addiction. Those would seem to be non-adaptive, and yet. I do like that he gives hominids these features, though, even if he never confronts them.

I read this one, but I don't think I'd read it again.

Stephen King, If It Bleeds

I think I had read this one before, but it's so hot I was looking for simple reads at the library. This is a collection of long short stories, three of them linked, and one containing our favorite character, Holly. The three linked stories, about a guy names Chuck, are honestly sort of dull, but the other stories are pretty good. Also, nothing too scary.

Worth reading if you just want something engaging that won't make you work hard.

Natasha Pulley, The Salt King

I actually listened to this one. I read it for a review with Asimov's, and loved it, of course. If you haven't yet read Pulley, this is a good one to start with. The audiobook, narrated by Luke R. Francis, is great. 

Like most of Pulley's books, we have a M/M romance at the center, though in this case it's a M/Supernatural Being relationship. And, as with most of Pulley's romance, it's mostly without any sort of physical passion. The two guys love each other, they just don't seem that interested in sex. 

Her previous book, The Mars House, was science-fictiony. This one is fantasy, which is what she normally writes; but not historical fantasy. Anyway, she's great, and this one is almost as good as my favorite book by her, The Kingdoms. Pulley is probably the only author who I buy in hardback *and* in audiobook.